Forest Primeval

by Maser, Chris

• ISBN13: 9780870715297
• ISBN10: 0870715291
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2001-04-01
• Publisher: Oregon State Univ Pr

Summary

In this classic work of ecology, Chris Maser traces the growth of an ancient forest in Oregon's Cascade Mountains from its fiery birth in the year 987 to the present. A unique "biography" of an ecosystem, Forest Primeval portrays a diverse fabric of plants, animals, and microorganisms working in unison.

Maser offers precise yet evocative accounts of the lives and events within the burgeoning forest: the habits of deer mice who help reseed the burned earth, the seemingly accidental but vitally necessary symbiotic associations between fungus and tree root tips that stimulate growth, the constant predation among wildlife. He reveals how over the course of a millennium, "microbes and fungi change a forest just as surely as a raging fire, only inconspicuously and more slowly".

As the life cycles of the forest progress, Maser's minute scientific observations unfold against the backdrop of history, a chronology of "human struggle and suffering that is paralleled in the life of . . . a single 1000-year-old Douglas fir". In taking this millennial view, Maser shows h

Table of Contents

Preface	ix
Acknowledgments	xi
Introduction	xiii
In the Beginning	1	(10)
Birth of a Forest	11	(38)
987 988 993 998 1000 1010
Young Forest	49	(29)
1020 1037 1042 1075 1080 1099
Mature Forest	78	(20)
1112 1137 1187 1210 1215 1223--1228
Ancient Forest	98	(127)
1237 1247 1252 1274 1287 1337 1412 1429--1430 1451 1492 1513 1526 1555 1620 1621 1691 1787 1803--1806 1812--1815 1832--1834 1840--1849 1850--1869 1870--1899 1900--1929 1930--1949 1950--1957 1958 1960 1963--1964 1965 1966--1967 1969--1973 1974--1987 1988
Epilogue	225	(6)
Glossary	231	(11)
Scientific and Common Names of Plants and Animals Cited in Text	242	(5)
References	247	(22)
Index	269